


compatible demons

by tsunderestorm



Category: Code Geass
Genre: Ficlet, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-29
Updated: 2018-11-29
Packaged: 2019-09-02 03:24:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 613
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16778635
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tsunderestorm/pseuds/tsunderestorm
Summary: "We are all searching for someone whose demons play well with ours."





	compatible demons

Lelouch’s sin rests around his neck; the weight of the world on his shoulders and the guilt of his geass code more like a collar of iron, _leaden._ His demon makes peace with Suzaku’s, making a home of the small, dusty space they’ve claimed. Cohabitation, a symbiosis. Suzaku’s own demon sits atop his chest, hunched over cat-like: a grotesque guarding the cathedral of sorrows and weighing down his heavy heart.

Routines revive. Like phoenixes, they are born from the ashes of war - small remnants of the life the three of them could have led if Nunnally wasn’t empress, if the two of them weren’t dead men walking. Lelouch makes tea. It is lukewarm, the way Suzaku likes it: tepid, not too extreme, made not for warming bodies or cooling throats but for soothing souls. They eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner; carefully prepared and portioned. They disagree, they argue, they make up. 

When they make love, it is a seance. The ghosts of the past convene, turning the space into a haunted burial ground and giving voices to the voiceless dead. It is bittersweet: tears dripping from Suzaku’s nose to Lelouch’s cheeks, shaking shoulders and hung heads even as they move in tandem, touch-starved and desperate for each other.

Lelouch remembers being younger, when happiness was like glass and lies were innocent white - such childish things that seem so foreign now. Nunnally asleep in sweet-smelling grass, Suzaku’s skin dappled in sunlight beneath the canopy of trees that bordered the shrine. _Someday we’ll live in a big house,_ he’d said, _and spirits will come down from the mountains and be our friends._

Suzaku wakes from nightmares every night. Panting, soaked in sweat, reaching for the controls of a knightmare that was destroyed years ago and a gun he no longer wears at his hip. Sobbing, he curls comma-shaped against Lelouch’s back, soundless sobs racking his battle-hardened body. Lelouch’s nightmares are quieter, shocking him out of sleep sharp and fast, like the blade that pierced his heart but hadn’t killed him.

Their life is measured in semicolons; the end of one thought and the beginning of the other. The 99th Emperor was heroically assassinated on his over-glorified palanquin and the Knight of Zero died in the skies over Japan.

Suzaku had become a creature of his uniform, corpses of the bright, smiling child he had been: the boy that had fell by the wayside when Genbu drove him to patricide, the innocence that vanished when Britannia used him in every way they could think of, the soldier that died when he became a knight. Lelouch knows them all, and is now left with only the _Suza_ to his _Lu._ Maybe the world has no forgiveness in its many hurting hearts for the White Death and his Demon Emperor, but they have enough for each other. 

The years have changed them - perhaps in all the masks they’ve worn they’ve lost bits of themselves, replaced them with manufactured personalities, mirrors of what they’ve seen. Some days are worse than others...some days, the guilt hangs like heavy fog, the blood on their hands bright and shocking no matter how many times they’ve washed their hands and accepted their fates. 

Some days, though, are better. Suzaku’s eyes sparkle like they did in the summer of 2009, Lelouch laughs the way he used to before it seemed trite. Some days they make love like their lives depend on it, desperate like the world is ending but confident they’ll be together when it does.

Perhaps they will live this way forever: two ghosts in a graveyard, blessed but undeserving. They know they shouldn’t have this second chance, but they have it.


End file.
